Tai Po Theatre
Tai Po Market, Tai Po,
Hong Kong
Tai Po Market, Tai Po,
Hong Kong
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The Tai Po Theatre was a neighbourhood cinema in Tai Po Market, Tai Po in the New Territories.
The theatre opened to business at an unknown date before World War II. Tai Po is the official translation and Cantonese pronunciation of its Chinese name, its exact English name if any is unknown.
Its programme before World War II is unknown since it neither posted advertisements in the local Chinese language newspapers, nor had its name in the film guides. During the war years, only films censored by the Japanese Armies could be shown at the theatre. According to a news article published by a war years Chinese language newspaper, the theatre was in business as of 17th October, 1943.
It re-opened after the war, and showed selected films until its closure in 1957 or 1958.
Contributed by
Raymond Lo
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Recent comments (view all 4 comments)
Now I remember how my youth was spent. There were no television in the early to mid-fifties. I was seeing up to 4 different English speaking talkies a day (2 cinemas in Taipo with 2 main feature films and also each with an “afternoon leisure film show”. The earliest subtitles (interpreted from English) were hand written and projected by slides onto a small space on the side of the main screen! So you had to flip from one to the other just to get a gist of what was happening with the plot! I remember seeing Disney’s Pinocchio there.
Pierre27
Do you remember the exact location of the theatre?
Yes I do. The site of the theatre was at the corner of Sui On Street and Hey Yuen Street (Hey Yuen = Cantonese for theatre)
The site is now a block of apartments named Moon House. The property developers were actually family relations and I remember it was built around 1964. The year when I left Hong Kong.
Google maps: <http://maps.google.es/maps?hl=es&ie=UTF8&ll=22.448597,114.163755&spn=0.002231,0.004801&t=h&z=18>
I can also remember something extremely unusual about this theatre.
In front of the screen on the right corner, not far from the front row, was a well!! This could be the only theatre in the whole world with a watering hole inside it. When we were kids we used to wander inside when the cinema was empty during the day and look around or play about. There were no gates or locked doors to stop people going in. One day we lifted the concrete lid and found that it was a well. I think we only found that out when we dropped a small stone into it and heard the sound of water (it was quite dark inside the cinema even during the day). Talk about health and safety! But then we are talking about a small market town in 1950’s rural area of Hong Kong, the New Territories.
The larger building on the bottom left was the Tai Po Cinema, seen from the side and back.
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